Jeff never ceases to inspire.

It’s been a slow few weeks for us Jailbreakers, especially those of us who own PCs.  If you own a mac, you’re probably thinking I have no idea what I’m talking about, but then again, you probably say that about ALL Windows users.  I took this opportunity to talk about something that really upsets me about the Jailbreak community.  Listen and learn….  remember… always go to the source… give credit where credit is due.

Always check the dev-team blog first.  They are the official developers of the Pwnage Tool, redsn0w, and other tools.

Please follow @iPhone_dev and if you’ve jailbroken your phone, send them a thank you via Twitter.

By the way… please excuse my terrible editing.  I recorded and edited this at 5am.  The part you cannot hear says “There is a black cloud hanging over the Jailbreak community.  This cloud is named quickpwn.com”

I have wanted to do a show about politics for quite some time now. The problem with that is, very few people can have a political discussion without getting all riled up. I have been involved in a few of these myself. People take their political views to heart. I know I do.  Yet, I believe that no matter how uncomfortable it may be for some to have these types of discussions, it is vital for people to take part in politics. At the very least, political discussion fosters education as to what the hell is going on in one’s country, state, city, town, etc. If you turn a blind eye to what is going on with your government, you are not doing your job as a citizen. This reminds me of something I always think about around election time, “If you don’t vote, don’t complain.”

The main idea behind Beer Diplomacy is to make political discussion and debate more accessible. By keeping it as light as possible, with beer as the catalyst for that, we hope to attract and inspire people who normally wouldn’t want to get involved to join the discussion. We plan on having guests of all political affiliations on the show.  As you can see from this first episode, we seemed to agree on most of what we were talking about.  We definitely want to have some debate.  The only way this will happen is if we vary the topics, as well as the types of guests we have on the show. If you are interested in joining the discussion, please send an email to beerdiplomacytv@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @beerdiplomacy.

I want to thank the people who helped me make this idea become a reality.  First off, I must give a shoutout to my good friend James (@rudolphe).  He and I talked this idea through before it was even an idea.  Due to a power outage, and technical difficulties for about 4 weeks straight, James couldn’t make it to episode 1.  He took the high road and told us to flim without him so, as a wise man once put, we could “put the rubber to the road.”  He will be joining us as soon as he can get his rig working properly.

Next, I’d like to thank Owen (@ohdoctah).  Here’s a guy that inspires me to be more than I am, and when I get there, raises the bar even higher.  He adds great insight to the show, and has a way with words; he can take a complex topic and break it down so all can understand.  There are countles other things I thank Owen for, but I’ll save the drama for my mama. (Support my boy, Owen here, here, and here)

Special thanks go out to Brian Brushwood (@shwood)  Without his help setting up vidblaster, setting up my audio mixer, and pretty much putting up with my incessant questioning, this show would not have been possible.  The bbLiveShow may be “The Worst Show on the Internet”, but without it, I wouldn’t be here doing what I’m doing right now. (You can find Brian’s other projects here and here)

Last, but not least, Justin Robert Young (@justinryoung)  for helping come up with the concept, and then letting me take it in my own direction.  What began as a week without a bbliveshow became an idea that has had me hard at work for quite some time now.  Thank you for your creative input and support. (Check out Justin’s projects here and here)

I hope you all enjoy the show.  Let us know if we ever leave something out, if there is a topic you would like to see us discuss, or want to disagree with our views and opinions.  That is what the show is all about.  More importantly, that is what diplomacy is all about.

Ever wonder why you can’t download files larger than 10MB from the appStore or iTunes while on 3G or EDGE? Me too. Does it piss you off that you can only use Skype for the iPhone while on a wi-fi connection? Me too. It makes me wonder why I have a computer in my pocket that cannot use the cellular network I pay for to perform data-intensive activites. Don’t get me started on tethering.

Thanks to 3G Unrestrictor, all of the above mentioned problems (except tethering, grrrr) can easily be solved. 3G Unrestrictor simply fools your device into thinking it is on wi-fi when it isn’t. Try it. You can thank me later.

Recently, it has come to the attention of the iPhone dev-team that there are apps that are collecting usage data and location without your knowledge on your iPhone.  Fortunately for those of us with jailbroken devices, we can take measures to protect ourselves.

Now, that I am no longer unemployed, I feel much more comfortable sharing the details of being unemployed. I have always prided myself on being a hard working, dedicated, and passionate employee of whatever company I have worked for. Thanks to an awful economy, I was laid off from my job in February.
This was the most prestigious position I had held in my professional life thus far. I made a good salary, and had a great amount of expenses paid, including cel phone, home phone/internet, meals while working, and a whole slew of others. I felt like this was the beginning of a long and successful career with a company I was psyched to be a part of. This company even went as far as to let us know we were not going to be held responsible for our downturn, because we were doing great before things began to get tough with the economy. To paraphrase a senior officer of the company, “The economy has changed, not the performance of our staff. Therefore we can not hold you responsible and your jobs are secure” Well, two months later, I was jobless with a 2 week severance check. Pretty pathetic for a three year dedicated, passionate term of service to the company. To make things worse, in New York State, at least, regardless of how much you make, the most you can collect in unemployment benefits is $405 BEFORE taxes. I just don’t understand how they can tax your salary for unemployment, then tax your unemployment when you need it.

I tried very hard to immediately jump back into the workforce, but our company was one of the last to feel the effects of this horrible economic downturn. I found it impossible to gain employment anywhere in my specific field, and even more difficult to enter a new field where I could apply my expertise to something new. None of the job/career sites were of ANY help. The newspaper was a joke. No, I did not want to stuff envelopes from home, or make a million dollars while sitting at my computer being a spammer. I began to decline into a pretty tough bout of depression. All of the confidence I had was gone. It soon became impossible to afford rent, car payments/insurance, food, and other essentials at the same time. Thankfully I have a woman in my life, Noodles, who is quite successful and was there to soften the impact of all of this. I DID have to make quite a few sacrifices, though. I took my car off the road, since I could no longer afford both insurance and payments. It is currently sitting in a parking lot with no plates and a cover on it. Affording COBRA health insurance is a joke. Even with President Obama’s help with COBRA costs, $405 a week (before taxes) does not allow one to pay for this. At 33 years old, it is pretty depressing and intimidating to have to start from scratch.

All of this was putting quite a strain on my relationship with a wonderful woman as well. In the beginning, she was extremely supportive, but as time went on, her patience began to wear thin. I don’t think anyone who has a good job in a terrible economy, when the unemployment rate is the highest it has been, at least since the great depression, can understand that it is just near impossible to find gainful employment. I was not about to work at the supermarket or McDowell’s… yet. Noodles would work all day, and come home, stressed, to me sitting on the couch. I can understand how this would piss someone of, to say the least. I WAS spending most, if not all of my days sending resume’s and looking for work, but with no success. I had lost almost all faith in my ability to find employment, and Noodle’s faith is me was dwindling as well. This is very emasculating, to say the least. There did not seem to be a bright light at the end of this dark tunnel. There WAS one thing that was keeping me sane, though… Twitter.

I have always been a geek. I remember falling in love with the Atari 2600, the Comodore PET computers in elementary school, my first 8086 computer; pretty much anything with bells and whistles made me feel good. I don’t know why, but when it came time to go to college, I felt like a course of study and career in some form of technology would only make me resent it. I thought if I worked at a computer all day, I wouldn’t want to come home and have fun with one. Let’s chalk that up to being an immature 18year old with no real concept of life. Although I was not studying technology, I was still participating in it in my personal life with great fervor. I remember hacking telnet to get the first versions of visual internet browsing to work. I was always taking apart PCs and putting them back together. I write this to give you a little insight into my love for tech.

With all of the spare time I had, I began to really get involved in Twitter as well as other forms of social media. I saw how the content of your words could grant you, for the lack of a better word, popularity within the world I so longed to be a part of. I am so inspired by the community of people that are as enthusiastic as I am to share ideas with one another. It amazed me that with one simple 140 character post, I could have questions answered, laughs shared, opinions respected, amongst the many other things Twitter is capable of. I prided myself on amassing a nice group of followers who I did not have to coerce into following me. They seemed to enjoy my words, and I enjoyed theirs. I was gaining back the confidence I had lost from being laid off.

All of this came to a head in June 2009. Via Twitter, I heard Jeff Pulver was holding a conference about Twitter in my home town, New York. I did not have the funds to attend, so I made it my mission to petition Jeff to allow me to help out with the logistics of the conference itself. I worked the registration tables, and got the chance to interact with hundreds of people who looked at Twitter and social media the same way I did. This was a turning point for me. I now knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a real part of this movement of “The State of Now”, and bringing people closer together based on the content of their words. Being able to have a great in depth conversation with people such as Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuck, Owen JJ Stone and others made me feel important once again. They are all visionaries in their field, and the fact that they would value the things I had to say made me feel like I could make a difference in social media as well. I cant say that if I were still employed at this time, I would have had this epiphany. Thank you all for making me realize that I am an important factor in the world! Thanks to Jeff and Daniel Berninger for giving me the opportunity to attend such a life changing event.

Since the 140 Characters Conference, I have been creating segments for Scott Johnson’s AppSlappy Podcast, I have finally gotten this blog off the ground (Thanks Adria!), been helping a few others (you know who you are) with their respective sites, and am in the process of launching a new video podcast/webcast in the near future. Most importantly, I gained back the feeling of confidence; the feeling that I can accomplish anything I put my mind to. With that confidence, I interviewed for a web 2.0 position at a fairly large marketing company. It took quite a while for them to get back to me, but as of yesterday, I have a new career!! Best of all, it is in the field I am most passionate about. I know I will be a success because it is exactly what I want to be doing.

I guess the point of me writing this catharsis is to help those of you out there who think that there is no hope. There IS hope. It may be hard to find, but just make sure you are focusing on what you love, not the failures and stumbles in your life. I love social media. Thanks to the 140 Characters Conference, and people like Owen, Adria, Rudolphe, Shwood, Justin, Scott, and Gary, I was able to turn things around and make something of myself once again. Find your inspiration and stick with it. Follow it until the day you die. I promise one thing… you will not have regrets, and eventually, someone will recognize your passion and reward you for it. It happened to me… it can happen to you.

Managing your Twitter traffic can be near impossible, especially if you follow a lot of people. Through trial and error I have gone from being insanely overwhelmed and not being able to keep track of many conversations or streams of my favorite people, to somewhat having a handle on specific tweeters and conversations. This problem is twofold; it occurs when you are on a computer as well as when you are mobile (I consider mobile to be any time you are not in front of a computer). Believe it or not, I have discovered ways to make Twitter more easily manageable while mobile. I’m still having issues when in front of a computer, but have definitely improved things.

So, let’s talk about mobile traffic. First and foremost, Twitter allows you to have tweets sent to your device via text message. You can select which users’ streams come to your device in multiple ways. Once you connect your mobile device to Twitter, I recommend setting 40404 as a contact named Twitter. If you use twitpic, you can also set your custom email address to this contact as well. All you need to do to have someone’s updates come to your device is send a text to 40404 which says “follow “. To remove them from your mobile updates, just send a text to 40404 which says “off “.

I learned the hard way not to follow too many people via mobile updates. My phone used to buzz and vibrate incessantly, and mostly from users I did not interact with on a regular basis. My recommendation is to only follow (via mobile) a small handful of users, preferably those you either have frequent discussion with, whose tweets provide you with invaluable information, or maybe a news outlet or two to give you real time updates of what’s going on in the world.

Next, is to choose a Twitter client for your device. (assuming you have a device that supports one). I use the iPhone, so my options are plentiful. There are many choices for the iPhone, but I stick to two Twitter apps. First and formost, my old standby is Twittelator Pro. This is probably one of, if not, the most powerful of apps available. You can have multiple accounts, unlimited groups, the ability to easily embed photos, audio and video, shorten those extra long tweets, and a whole slew of other invaluable features.

The second is TweetDeck. As many of you may know TweetDeck is one of the most popular desktop Twitter clients. The beauty of TweetDeck for the iPhone is it’s ability to sync with your desktop client. It may not be very feature rich otherwise, but easy continuity from desktop to mobile is priceless.

Both of these apps, as well as any other mobile Twitter client are great for those times when you’re away from a computer and have the time to sit down and look at Twitter for a longer period of time than just a brief glance.

Yet, with an iPhone, it becomes even easier to participate in Twitter conversation thanks to a great little app named Boxcar. Thanks to firmware 3.0, the iPhone now supports push notification. Boxcar pushes all @mentions as well as DMs directly to your device. Twitter.com will send DMs to you as texts if you have mobile notifications on, but not @mentions. I find this application invaluable. Especially, for example, if I am in the middle of a thought provoking discussion with another Twitter user while at a computer, and must leave my desk. No matter where I go, as long as I have my device with me, Boxcar will make sure I can continue the conversation. It will even automatically open up your favorite Twitter app for you to reply to any message.

My next suggestion is an app for all of you who actually care when you lose followers. I usually don’t care myself, but I like to know when someone who I take interest in unfollows me. There is a relatively new app on the AppStore named BridBrain. This app does things I have not yet been able to find in a desktop app. Birdbrain lets you know who follows/unfollows you, (as well as if it was because Twitter blocked/removed them) if someone you follow is following you, allows you to easily look at their last tweet, as well as a ton of other metric data.

With all of these tools, staying connected to the Twitter universe while “afk” becomes much more practical. I dare to say you can be even more “in the loop” while mobile than when in front of a computer.

In this segment, I discuss an app that brings you as close as possible to multitasking on your device.  While backgrounder is in no way perfect, it can and does a decent amount of background processing on your phone. It’s only real limitation is the small amount of RAM on your device.